Page 79 - Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Projects like the Venus Swarm can be used to implement the roadmap provided by policies and programmes
aimed at reducing water pollution and protecting marine biodiversity, such as those in Box 18.

Box 18: Various UN programmes and policies to protect the marine climate and its biodiversity

UN Programmes and policies to protect the marine climate and its biodiversity

The United Nations has proclaimed a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development
(2021-2030) to support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health and gather
ocean stakeholders worldwide behind a common framework that will ensure that ocean
science can fully support countries in creating improved conditions for the sustainable
development of the ocean. Scientific understanding of the ocean’s responses to pressures
and management action is fundamental for sustainable development. UNESCO’s Harmful
Algal Bloom Programme, for example, aims to foster the effective management of, and
scientific research on, harmful algal blooms in order to understand their causes, predict
their occurrences and mitigate their effects.

UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) coordinates the decade’s
preparatory process, inviting the global ocean community to plan for the next ten years
in ocean science and technology. The IOC-UNESCO holds a universal mandate for marine
science within the UN system and is working to improve responses to the unprecedented
environmental changes and human impacts now occurring and to promote ocean health via
marine sciences. The joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental
Protection (GESAMP) is the UN advisory mechanism for collaboration and coordination,
which conducts assessments and in-depth studies to evaluate the state of the marine
environment and identify emerging issues. It is presently sponsored by 10 UN agencies.

UN Environment works with governments, businesses, universities and civil society
groups around the world to promote the protection and sustainable management of
marine and coastal environments. UN Environment hosts the secretariat for the Global
Programme of Action (GPA) for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based
Activities. Since 2012, the work of the secretariat has been focused on establishing and
strengthening voluntary, multi-stakeholder partnerships on nutrient pollution, marine
litter and wastewater. Nutrients management, marine litter and wastewater have been
highlighted as priority source categories to address, and the GPA secretariat has established
and strengthened three global multi-stakeholder partnerships: The Global Partnership on
Nutrient Management (GPNM); the Global Partnership on Marine Litter (GPML); and the
Global Wastewater Initiative (GWI). The Regional Seas Programme, launched in 1974, is
one of UN Environment’s most significant achievements in the past four decades. Since
its inception, the Regional Seas Programme has been aiming to address the accelerating
degradation of the world’s oceans and coastal areas through the sustainable management
and use of the marine and coastal environment by engaging neighbouring countries in
comprehensive and specific actions to protect their shared marine environment.

Keeping the world’s oceans and seas under continuing review by leveraging robotic technology and
integrating existing information from different disciplines will help to improve responses from national
governments and the international community toward addressing the unprecedented environmental
changes that are now occurring underwater. Data gathered by these technologies can be used to
develop better models that can help predict the future of Earth’s climate and help understand how
its oceans will cope with higher temperatures, acidification and other climate shocks.

Combining the use of frontier technologies to achieve this will be particularly helpful. For example,
AI and related technologies, such as IoT, are also expected to foster progress in most, if not all, areas

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